Happiness for vulnerable people
01 May 2013 | Carwyn Gravell
The achievement of happiness is a science not an art. So say
Martin Seligman, Matthieu Ricard, Sir Richard Layard and their
followers who have codified the types of actions and thoughts that
make us emotionally well and that allow us to 'flourish' as human
beings. Behavioural experiments have been conducted, brains scanned
and data sets processed. Happiness as defined by our emotional
state, life satisfaction, and sense of meaning and purpose in life
is now even being measured by the government! (Swansea, Glasgow,
and Manchester according to the ONS are the UK's misery hot-spots,
though spirits are rallied somewhat, one hopes, by the success of
their football teams.)
There are external factors that contribute to our happiness
(whether we have a job, the material conditions of our life, etc)
but 'personal resources' count just as much (our attitudes,
beliefs, sense of resilience and hopes for the future) in enabling
us to function well and to feel good. What's more, we can boost our
personal resources by various actions (learning new skills, showing
kindness to others, spending time with family and friends) and by
the practice of 'positive psychology' - for example, by writing
down every night 3 good things that have happened during the day (a
practice proven to lift mood in the long term and to reduce
depressive symptoms).
These insights have caught on. The Action for Happiness movement now has over
29,000 members from over 140 countries. Who are these
people? What's their motivation for joining? According to Sir
Richard Layard's seminal book on happiness, it is the pursuit and
achievement of material prosperity that has made us discontent,
sick at heart. Is the happiness movement therefore merely a
middle-class de-tox of the spirit, and its disciples the victims of
a culture of anomie?
When Lemos&Crane teamed up with Action for
Happiness recently the question we asked was: How can lessons from
the new science of happiness be applied to services for homeless
and vulnerable people? We were joined by some old friends of the
firm who provide support services to these groups to grapple with
the question, which threw up some interesting challenges and
paradoxes…
Firstly, to state the obvious, homeless and vulnerable people
are not rich, or well off. Money, or at least a modicum of material
comfort, would be a start for many in their position, surely?
Secondly, is it really the business of service providers spending
public money to make people happy? Aren't they there to meet
material need, fix problems? Once this is done, it's over to the
(fixed) person, buoyed by gratitude perhaps, to get on with their
life, with happiness a distant and private goal. And thirdly, isn't
this happiness thing a government ruse to make poor people content
with hardship because they (the government) have run out of money
to address it?
Practitioners of the happiness movement argue that their
insights are for everyone's benefit, not
just well-off people. Service providers don't need to wait
until their service users' needs have been met, in a neat
escalation of a hierarchy of needs, before getting on to the
happiness step. It doesn't work like that. Practice of the
happiness code can help people make the most of their present
circumstance however challenging, providing energy and motivation
to address problems, set goals, be resilient to set backs and to
progress in life. It needs to run alongside the traditional model
of support, not follow on afterwards.
So if the pursuit of service users' happiness has a valid place
in the mission statement of support providers, how should services
enact and embody the promise?
A number of headings emerged from the discussion:
- The importance of asking service users about and respecting
their strengths, interests and capabilities not just their needs
and problems
- Getting staff themselves to buy into and to practice the
insights of happiness - showing kindness to others, taking interest
in people and their environment, exploring new skills and
interests, etc
- Finding ways of 'overtly' communicating the principles of
happiness to service users through innovative means (games,
messaging on posters, texts, newsletters, etc) - contextualizing
the happiness mantras to take account of people's challenging
circumstances (it might be hard for a rough sleeper to real off
three positive events in their day)
- Exploring ways of instigating activities that generate
happiness 'covertly' - nature projects, choirs, book groups,
offering opportunities for volunteering, etc
- Getting service providers and service users relating on a more
equal footing (while respecting professional boundaries, duty of
care, etc) through co-production for example
Lots to work on then... In the meantime, here are some examples
of work already going on that we heard about at the seminar to keep
spirits up:
- The Simon Community's ethos of encouraging
love and kindness on a day-to-day basis within their service
for rough sleepers - the organisation has over 100
volunteers who contribute to the service alongside 2 full-time
staff
- St Mungo's Recovery college where staff and
services enrol on courses side by side and share learning and
enthusiasm; one of the most popular courses being 'Brand Me'!
- The DIY Happiness project run by South London
and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust where groups of vulnerable and
disadvantaged women have taken part in happiness workshops
Carwyn Gravell is a partner at
Lemos&Crane. Lemos&Crane has provided practitioners and
policy-makers with information for action on social problems since
1994. They work with professionals in social housing, local
government, criminal justice agencies, schools and voluntary
organisations.
This article is based on a workshop on Happiness and Vulnerable
People held in partnership with Action for Happiness in April
2013.
Tags:
Do things for others, Be a Happiness Activist